Christoph Maier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > One possible explanation why C# got introduced at the place I work at > is that the manager of the software department found it in his best > career interest to reduce everybody to the abysmally low standards of > the least capable programmer, whose code he demanded to be > "respected", thereby creating the artificial need for a lot of more > management, and an artificial inflation of the headcount of his > department.
That's a classic example of the same sort of technology-drive "deskilling" process described in David F. Noble's book /Forces of Production/¹. Managers -- or the capital owners -- make technology choices not to produce the best technical results, but to drive down the competence level required to do the work, remove power and wage entitlement from the skilled technicians, and further widen the power divide to ensure their superior position. The perception is not that skilled workers can help the management reach its goals; rather, managers see the workers as a threat to controlled, devalued, and, if at all possible -- and not necessarily profitably so -- eliminated. Maintenance of power comes before economic benefit. It's all in the book. Footnotes: ¹ http://www.amazon.com/Forces-Production-History-Industrial-Automation/dp/0195040465 -- Steven E. Harris -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
